


Only Today

by worldturnedupsidedown



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Trick or Treat: Treat, timeskip fic, training fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-14 22:04:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16049483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worldturnedupsidedown/pseuds/worldturnedupsidedown
Summary: Sakura knows how to get stronger and it involves having rocks thrown at her head, rivals who won't give up and teachers who think they aren't her teacher anymore.





	Only Today

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crunchysunrises](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crunchysunrises/gifts).



**Tsunade**

"Today we're going to work on dodging some more," Tsunade said with the gleam in her eye that meant there was nothing good in store for Sakura. She was certain her master was taking out her frustrations from being Hokage on her poor little students.

Bringing that up only led to boulders being thrown at her head so Sakura kept quiet.

"Alright."

She knew it was too easy when Tsunade pulled out a dummy and lobbed it at her. Sakura dodged it and it crashed to the floor.  
  
"You were supposed to catch that one," her master pointed out wryly. Sakura whipped her head around to stare at her.

"How was I supposed to know you hadn't filled it with bombs?"

"Because it's a training dummy. That is a good idea though." Now Sakura regretted ever bringing it up. "You want to be a field medic? Then you have to learn how to heal someone while dodging enemy fire. We call this dummy Rags and poor Rags has several broken bones." Tsunade eyed the dummy crumbled at Sakura's feet. "More broken bones than she started off with. You have to heal her while dodging my attacks, preferably without dodging in such a way that ends up with your patient filled with enemy kunai."

Sakura stared at the dummy in dismay. The hospital dummies could replicate injuries nicely, more like the lifelike puppets from Suna than dolls, but Sakura hated them. They were completely blank but she had to treat them like actual people. At least this time she wasn't being tested on her bedside manner.

"Oh, Sakura?" She looked up to see Tsunade had three kunai in hand. "Go." And she let the kunai fly.

Rags weighed less than an adult human but far more than Sakura was used to carrying when dodging during training. She could move her body easily now but Rags' limbs got in the way and more than once Sakura caught the edge of a kunai as she tried to move fast enough without turning and letting the kunai hit Rags.

"You have to actually do some healing, Sakura," Tsunade called through the trees. Sakura did a diagnostic scan on Rags, noting the makeshift body had five breaks in total. A second later, three kunai and two rocks came whistling through the branches up above and landed where she had been standing. Rags' weight drew on Sakura's shoulders, pulling her down towards the ground as she ran through the trees.

Remembering what Tsunade had said about hiding from pursuers, even if it bought her only a few seconds, Sakura tried to tamp down her chakra but between trying to heal Rags, dodging Tsunade's attacks and running for her life, Sakura could only dampen her chakra at quiet moments.

Rags had two bones mended when Sakura took the first hit. A kunai was heading towards Rags' head and Sakura, without thinking that this was a rag doll she was protecting, stuck her arm in between the weapon and her patient. She caught it but not before it sliced open her hand.

"I admire the sentiment, Sakura, but you need those hands for healing." Tsunade sounded amused but not disappointed which Sakura took as a win. She was about to continue running when the world started to swim around her. "And that kunai was poisoned."

Sakura woke up at the hospital. The next day, she was facing Tsunade, Rags in hand.

"Good girl." Tsunade's gaze glowed with approval. During training, it didn't matter how many times you fell down as long as you kept getting up.

 

**Ino**

Following Sasuke's departure from the village, Sakura and Ino's love rivalry ended. Not just because Sasuke was a traitor to the village and it would be more than a little suspicious if the two of them kept fighting over him (never mind that Sakura still had some complicated feelings over Sasuke), but also because Ino loved her teammates and she still remembered what they looked like after trying to get Sasuke back.

"I'm not going to say anything against him," Ino said frankly when she ran into Sakura again afterwards. "He's still your teammate and you and Naruto still have faith you'll get him back." That Ino thought the faith was misplaced was obvious but to her credit, she said nothing. "But my teammates are more important. Maybe I didn't love him so much in the first place, or maybe I just love them more."

"I understand." And Sakura did. If it had been Shikamaru doing what Sasuke had done, Sakura would have found it hard to muster up any good feelings for him.

"Of course, we're still rivals."

"Eh?" Sakura blinked.

"Well, all the best ninja have rivals to force them to be better. To spar against and try to beat. It's no use having a rival in my team, Shikamaru's too lazy and Chouji's too nice. Hinata would spend more of her time avoiding me than she would training, and Kiba and Shino are just... no." Ino wrinkled her nose and though Sakura felt it unfair to Kiba and Shino, she giggled all the same.

"I think I'm flattered that I'm the best out of a bad lot."

Ino rolled her eyes. "Don't be stupid. We spar tomorrow and I'm going to beat you, Forehead Girl."

"Not if I beat you first, Ino-pig." A nod sealed the deal.

The next morning, before Sakura's hospital shift, she found herself in a taijutsu only spar with Ino. Tsunade had improved Sakura's taijutsu immensely but Ino had been improving as well, using clan techniques to their full advantage. Yamanakas were famous for their mental jutsus, but each clan had their own unique taijutsu style. Something at which Ino seemed to be a natural.

Ino won by tripping Sakura into a tree that ended up knocking her out and when Sakura woke up, she covered her face in shame.

"I won." Ino continued to not help by gloating.

"You didn't win, the tree won," Sakura said indignantly. Maybe if she said it enough times it would be true.

"Okay, when Asuma asked me how our spar went, I said it ended by a tree beating you." Sakura lifted her head to glare at her friend. Ino looked unbearably smug and Sakura resolved to try even harder in sparring with Tsunade, just so she could get a good enough punch to wipe that grin off Ino's face.

"Fine, you win," she spat but then brightened. "But I'm going to beat you next time."

Ino's eyes narrowed. "You wish."

And that was how the two of them set up a regular sparring date. Or, as Shikamaru liked to call it after witnessing it once, their regular 'beat each other up and gloat' date.

 

**Kakashi**

The thing is, when Sakura first got Kakashi as her sensei, she didn't know quite how famous he was. When the Demon in the Mist knew exactly who he was she started to get an inkling of how powerful her sensei was. But then he fell over from chakra exhaustion and limped around on crutches for two days and he was back to being her weird, lazy sensei. Her time with him as her sensei followed that exact pattern: he would do something which showed off how powerful and utterly cool he was, and then he would giggle at his porn or get into a rock-paper-scissors challenge with Gai and she would be reminded that he was also an utter dork.

She told him this one day and he blinked at her over his Icha Icha book. "I'm not your sensei anymore, Sakura," was all he said before going back to his book.

"I don't agree with that," Sakura said primly. If Kakashi got his way, he would let himself get sucked back into doing high-ranked, highly dangerous missions and he would revert back to what Tsunade liked to call his 'boy-genius-creepy-doll' years. But now he had a student who was just discovering just how stubborn she was.

"You're a chunin now," Kakashi said as he turned a page of his book. "That means you don't need a jounin-sensei anymore."

"You're my sensei and that isn't going to change." She had lost Naruto and Sasuke, no way was she going to lose Kakashi as well. Kakashi sighed and turned another page. "Kakashi-sensei, I've been taking lessons from Gai." Now she had his full attention. "You're my sensei and I'm not letting you go."

"That's a little terrifying, Sakura," Kakashi admitted but he didn't look back down at his book so maybe he meant it a little.

"Thank you. Can we spar?"

Kakashi looked at her with that searching look of his that didn't give anything away. "Fine." His book disappeared and he was on his feet. Sakura blinked and scrambled to follow. She had wanted to wait to spar with Kakashi until she had something to surprise him with but she had realised that she didn't want to keep on waiting to spar with her sensei.

It wasn't really a spar so much as a beat down. Kakashi was unrelenting and soon enough, Sakura was down on the floor unable to move. She was panting as she stared up at an infuriatingly unruffled Kakashi as he pulled out another orange book. She started to heal herself from within, something which Tsunade said she was very gifted at, as she stared up at her sensei.

There was a very real possibility that he had beaten her so hard and fast in order to put her off sparring with him at all. The Sakura he had first known would have become dispirited and avoided him out of some inferiority complex. Now Sakura had been beaten into the ground by Tsunade six times a week for the last fifty-seven weeks, he was going to have to try harder than that.

When she was able to, she sprang to her feet. "I can't spar again tomorrow because shishou and I are training and then I have the hospital but the day after tomorrow I'm free."

Kakashi looked up from his book, the expression in his one visible eye now visibly surprised. "Sakura, I'm not your sensei anymore."

"You're going to have to try harder than that, Kakashi-sensei." Sakura bared her teeth in what could only loosely be called a grin. As Kakashi's eye sharpened as it looked at her, she wondered if she was going to regret it. She would probably spend more of the day after tomorrow searching for her sensei than actually sparring with him, but she would take her training in whatever she could.

If Kakashi thought she was as weak as when they first met, he would learn how wrong he was.


End file.
